The credibility of the US political elite is so low that the New York Times, the heartbeat of the American liberal establishment has called for President Joe Biden to quit the election race due to his disastrous performance in the first debate with his far right opponent Donald Trump.
Whatever happens now will reveal even further how deep the credibility crisis is because there appears to be no viable alternative to Biden in the Democratic Party. In effect, Biden is being asked to withdraw and thereby hand the November election to Donald Trump.
This would hardly be the first time in history that the liberal establishment has colluded in enabling the far and fascistic right to take power – and expose working people to an onslaught of devastating proportions and deliver a shock to global allies and partners about America’s unreliability as the head of the liberal international order.
The whole world is watching US made-for-TV politics
Millions in America and worldwide tuned in to watch the first live debate between the presumptive nominees for the US presidency. Presumptive because neither has yet officially been endorsed by their respective party’s convention – which begs the question as to why have the debate so early, especially as it exposed the decay beneath the façade of normalcy? A nation with all that talent has ended up with two hated and unpopular candidates. More on that later.
What we saw at the debate before either had even spoken was a proven liar and convicted felon representing the so called Grand Old Party, and a candidate who frequently appears to be physically frail, mentally not ‘all there’, and widely referred to as ‘Genocide Joe’. Trump is scheduled to be sentenced and could be in prison before the far right party he dominates goes through the motions of endorsing him as their anointed candidate. Meanwhile, President Jospeh Biden continues to claim against much convincing evidence that the US is the envy of the world, it’s ‘last, best hope’.
It is unsurprising then that the race for the White House remains on a knife edge. And the proportion of the electorate known as ‘double haters – those who hate both candidates – has reached 25%, which is around 40 million people. Little wonder voters believe that the US is heading in the wrong direction, and its political parties, congress, and presidential candidates have little credibility. Yet, people’s problems across all areas of life, and debates about the future of popular rights at home to protest without massive police repression, to abortion, to a decent standard of living, to security from school shootings, security in old age and when unwell as COVID-19 resurges, continue to intensify.
And hey presto – the headlines after the debate more or less told us what we already knew: Trump lied, and Biden fumbled his lines…mostly, but he warmed up. After a rather listless start, he landed heavy blows on Trump’s felonies, morality, lying, role in the attempted coup and insurrection of 6 January 2021 and, most vitally, how Trump would cosy up to Putin and hand Europe to Russian imperialism. More on this last point below.
But Trump is said to have ‘won’ the debate and his party’s declared the November election pretty much already in the bag. And winning is all that matters. One party will win, the other lose, and the real losers – around 330 million Americans – walked away from the debate wondering and worrying for their future. And the rest of us in the world are left bemused at how a country with so many people, so many creative and intellectual strengths, that produced leaders of the calibre of Washington, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts, could produce two candidates of such low calibre, and who make life and death decisions that impact so many.
Also read: Trump Outshines Biden in First Debate Clash: Democratic Anxiety Ahead of 2024 US Elections
Modern American politics is a TV spectacle, a series of images and headlines and talking heads filling air time voracious for content, any words or pictures to cast a veil over a process that has no substance. It’s the superficial visible layer of a ‘battle’ over the spoils of power and Big Money between two parties wedded to Big Money, and networked to corporate lobbyists, corporate think tanks, corporate foundations, corporate media, major corporations and free-wheeling unregulated and largely untaxed billionaires. The deeper rot that corporate media coverage seeks to conceal, by making politics a test of ‘personality’, image, the mere outer skin worn by a body politic decaying without relent, is spiralling into an American-style fascistic abyss.
It makes Marx’s and Lenin’s concept of ‘bourgeois democracy’ seem quaint and outdated. This is corporate monstrosity on a gargantuan global scale, devouring power, people, extracting whatever it wants of the world’s resources. It is waging wars on all resistances at home and abroad, showing that the makers of ‘rules-based international order’ waive the rules as did all past empires.
2024 – year of elections, but America’s is exceptional
2024 is the year of elections, as we know. But the one that really matters on a global scale is the American one, in the world’s pivotal state, its financial, economic, military, diplomatic powerhouse – and its powder keg. The United States is so central to the world system and all its processes, and all its crises, that it has become also the centre of the crisis itself. All the world’s problems and contradictions, all the struggles and fights and fallouts of a world experiencing a ‘poly crisis’ of climate change, military conflict, global pandemics, globalisation-driven inequality, forced migration, international lawlessness, and large-scale military and popular resistance, ultimately circle back to the USA. When ‘everywhere’ is a US national interest, the problems of everywhere ultimately will end up on the US’ own doorstep.
That is why the United States is in the vortex of crises – it’s the beating, and dying, heart of the world’s sole imperial superpower. Of an imploding moribund empire, making it more dangerous and, frankly, terrifying.
So let’s breathe life into the beast – and have an unprecedentedly early debate.
Biden is the national security state’s candidate
In the modern American political landscape one fact is incontrovertible: the Democratic party has become the national security establishment’s preferred party. In case there’s any doubt on that front, cast an eye back at Trump’s rhetoric about NATO and Putin, and the numerous open letters by former national security officials and insiders challenging Trump’s America First-ism. Look at how unreliable a force are GOP House representatives in backing the Ukraine war. Forget that Trump as president did little to weaken NATO other than talk about its obsolescence. Or the GOP solidly backed massive increases in the military budget under Trump and Biden. It is against national security orthodoxy even to criticise such sacrosanct institutions – CIA, FBI, NSC, Pentagon, NATO – founded at the ‘creation’ of the American empire. And consider the fact that America’s western allies have virtually accepted they can no longer rely on the United States and, in the case of Canada, taken measures to mitigate the effects of a rush to their borders should the US descend into violent political strife.
The worry of national security guardians is Biden may well be past his best – that is, in serving their interests in Ukraine, NATO, Gaza, and perhaps regarding China and Taiwan. Supplying weapons to Israel while calling for a ceasefire would appear to be a quite simple contradiction. Supplying weapons to Ukraine without any concept of where it all ends, another contradiction. And both further undermining American credibility.
Hence the early debate – the earliest ever held. The aim, it appears, was, if Biden performed well to put to bed the idea that there was anything wrong with his mental capacities. And if he did badly, to give plenty of time to rectify matters at the second debate, scheduled for September. This is from Seymour Hersh’s Substack, ‘Who is Running the Country?’
Hersh is probably the best informed investigative journalist when it comes to the national security managers and apparatchiks. He’s been hooked into that machine for decades and as a result used inside information to expose the wrong-doings of that war machine – from the MaiLai massacre in Vietnam through Watergate, Iran-Contra, Abu Gharib, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, and more.
Biden’s minders and managers in the White House are playing games with ‘their’ president. Their solution to a problem tends to turbocharge the next problem. And now the ‘Grey Lady’ that guards the liberal republic has spoken and, by so doing, plunged another dagger into the Democratic party’s heart.
They have sowed the wind. The whole world may reap the whirlwind.
Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City, University of London, a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a columnist at The Wire. He is an International Fellow at the ROADS Initiative think tank, Islamabad, and author of several books including Foundations of the American Century. He is currently writing a book on the history, politics, and powers of the US Foreign Policy Establishment.
